ou think
of that?"

After favoring his audience with this promising preface, Morgan indulged
himself in a chuckle of supreme satisfaction, and then began to read,
without wasting another preliminary word on any one of us.

BROTHER MORGAN'S STORY of THE DREAM-WOMAN.

CHAPTER I.

I HAD not been settled much more than six weeks in my country practice
when I was sent for to a neighboring town, to consult with the resident
medical man there on a case of very dangerous illness.

My horse had come down with me at the end of a long ride the night
before, and had hurt himself, luckily, much more than he had hurt
his master. Being deprived of the animal's services, I started for my
destination by the coach (there were no railways at that time), and I
hoped to get back again, toward the afternoon, in the same way.

After the consultation was over, I went to the principal inn of the town
to wait for the coach. When it came up it was full inside and out. There
was no resource left me but to get home as cheaply as I could by hiring
a gig. The price asked for this accommodation struck me as being so
extortionate, that I determined to look out for an inn of inferior
pretensions, and to try if I could not make a better bargain with a less
prosperous establishment.

I soon found a likely-looking house, dingy and quiet, with an
old-fashioned sign, that had evidently not been repainted for many years
past. The landlord, in this case, was not above making a small profit,
and as soon as we came to terms he rang the yard-bell to order the gig.

"Has Robert not come back from that errand?" asked the landlord,
appealing to the waiter who answered the bell.

"No, sir, he hasn't."

"Well, then, you must wake up Isaac."

"Wake up Isaac!" I repeated; "that sounds rather odd. Do your hostlers
go to bed in the daytime?"

"This one does," said the landlord, smiling to himself in rather a
strange way.

"And dreams too," added the waiter; "I shan't forget the turn it gave me
the first time I heard him."

"Never you mind about that," retorted the proprietor; "you go and rouse
Isaac up. The gentleman's waiting for his gig."

The landlord's manner and the waiter's manner expressed a great deal
more than they either of them said. I began to suspect that I might be
on the trace of something professionally interesting to me as a medical
man, and I thought I should like to look at the hostler before the
waiter awakened him.

"